


Battle's ours or no one's

by Plumasicera



Category: Naruto
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Anal Sex, Angst, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 14:38:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19396192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plumasicera/pseuds/Plumasicera
Summary: Naruto needs to convince himself that he hates him. Sasuke knows he doesn’t love him.(—Or truth and lie devour each other and no one knows where the self-deception starts).





	Battle's ours or no one's

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing it around 2011 so there are some things that are different from canon ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯. It was originally written in Spanish so there may be some translating mistakes. 
> 
> Also! Title’s from Mario Benedettis’s poem Intimidad (I roughly translated it —you can check it at the end of the story).
> 
> Thanks for reading!

When everything’s over, Naruto feels relief and an uncertain fear for what he’ll find once he raises his eyes but, above all, he feels the kind of inner emptiness heavy burdens leave behind when they disappear. That kind of taste that isn’t bitter, nor sweet —more like an extreme exhaustion kept at bay for just too long and finally spreading without obstacles to the furthest pieces of his being.

_This is it_ , he thinks. _It’s over_.

When everything’s over, Sasuke feels rage and hate, old and well-known. A rage and hate that consume him, ones he knows he’ll never get rid of. He lies on the dusty ground and closes his eyes waiting for the coup de grace. The only things that can be heard are Naruto’s heavy breathing and the dragging sound of his feet when, long after, he manages to stand. Sasuke hasn’t moved yet.

_Is this it?_ He thinks. _Is it already over?_

Naruto takes an eternity to reach him. Sasuke can hear the slowness with which he moves —every step seems to demand a strength that Naruto surely cannot have at this point. It won’t be until two days later that he’ll have his pierced lung and broken bones treated, the blood drained from his inner injuries. No one could ever explain how it was possible for him to stand up and walk, and those who ever got to ask would only receive a confused stare as if the answer was so obvious that Naruto couldn’t comprehend that someone needed to actually ask.

Sasuke feels a sticky puddle under his back and a terrible pain in his abdomen but he can’t even open his eyes to gauge the extent of his injuries. He just waits, motionless over his own blood, for Naruto to do something.

But—

Naruto does nothing.

It’s been a while since Naruto’s stopped by his side and still nothing happens so, finally, as if the very act of thinking hurts him, Sasuke wonders what is he waiting for. He moves his head half an inch and with some effort he opens his eyes finding among the dust floating in the air the blurred image of Naruto’s face rising above him. They gaze at each other for long seconds though, in reality, Naruto’s eyes are absent and Sasuke can’t focus one hundred percent. However, as Sasuke’s vision clears, his breathing becomes faster. His face contorts and when he finally deciphers Naruto’s intentions he clenches his jaw so hard his teeth screech.

Rage climbs up his throat with the violence of an erupting volcano. His raw cry resonates through the wasteland amplified within the silence, and that’s what guides Kakashi to their position from miles away. Naruto observes him from his height, silent, and the blue of his eyes contrasts brutally with the dusty-surrounding world. The sadness within them is so deep that it could crack the earth but Sasuke doesn’t care. Naruto’s sadness is meaningless compared to his own suffering, and the pain that this decision will bring Naruto too is not enough for Sasuke to forgive him. Maybe it’s Sasuke who is not enough to forgive.

Blood floods his lungs; when he tries to speak it gushes and almost chokes him. He’s sure Naruto’s understood every word but, just in case, he slowly repeats them fixing his eyes on him, feeling the warm blood running down his neck like a cruel hug.

“Damn you” he spits, and the words get stuck, twist and finally crawl between red dyed teeth. “Damn you”.

* * *

They keep him confined for months.

Seasons change at a slow pace: cold arrives drowsy and the first flakes fall without completely settling. It’s been years since the Village’s seen snow for the last time and the event is greeted with a tentative festive spirit that helps to cope with its long, icy nights. Life goes unmerciful, waiting for no one —the wintriest of winter comes and goes, and spring rains clean and then mud and then clean again the stagnation of all those cold months. Somewhat late cherry trees begin to bloom with a brutal sweet smell and flowering branches —something the last Uchiha is not witness to from his dismal captivity, which he endures in solitude. Visits are categorically forbidden and no one’s seen him since he was brought back bloody and consumed after the both of them were found. Despite that, rumors slide all around the village in whispers not discreet enough and, well. Konoha is a ninja’s village. Its survival has always been about being able to get information so it’s not strange that people _know_. (That the last Uchiha wouldn’t speak. That the last Uchiha doesn’t forgive. That the last Uchiha is like a rabid animal, feeding with slow patience his hatred and that he will never be subdued). Top ranked ANBU are the ones guarding his cell and it is not secret either that there are long-time bets running between them about how long will Uchiha manage to keep his sanity (no one bet he would make it to summer but summer heat comes and goes and everything stays the same).

Naruto (who also waits with slow patience, collecting both his fears and hope) tells himself that it doesn’t matter whether Sasuke loses his mind and, later, when the first autumn leaf falls to the ground and Sasuke is released and confined to another kind of imprisonment within what once was the Uchiha district, he says it again ( _it doesn’t matter_ ) and he truly believes it.

( _It doesn’t matter what I’ll find_ ).

(Oh, he’s just so wrong).

The evening he’s finally able to see him again, he can feel the invisible eyes that the guarding ninjas keep on him. The sky’s painted a deep blue and the first stars begin to light up in the east (but the Uchiha district is a tomb). Naruto takes a breath, knocks on the door, and when there’s no answer he simply pushes. The world’s dark inside, in another plane of time, and in the middle of everything there’s Sasuke waiting for him as if he’d never doubted that Naruto would come.

The moment they see each other again there is a soft collision in the air, the resulting end of two crashing forces —two forces that, even after everything that has happened, fit together. The furniture, the walls, even the foundations tremble with the slow pulse that is Sasuke’s concentrated energy. Everything’s so full of his presence that is startling and, for an infinitesimal moment, Naruto naively believes that this is all there is. That the oppressive, heavy-dreary air that barely lets him breathe is the worst thing that he’ll have to face, and during that infinitesimal moment he feels relieved. Then Sasuke’s eyes fix on his and Naruto feels like laughing.

(He’s so, so wrong).

It almost takes him by surprise when he feels Sasuke’s body against his, his warm strange after such a long, long time. His mouth tastes like emptiness and then like honey, a honey as sweet as death. Naruto doesn’t realize what’s happening until much later, when they are already naked and sweating and his hands have moved on their own, and he thinks then that if this is what Sasuke wants, so be it. Naruto’s already denied him the only thing he had promised and the least thing he can do now is to give him everything else.

(Flesh, and blood, and life, and death, and honey, honey, honey in his mouth, on his tongue, on his teeth).

In contrast, he remembers the bitter bile that filled him when they fought for the last time and he had Sasuke lying at his feet. The hit of reality had been ruthless, although it wasn’t as if there was anyone to blame but him. Up until that moment Naruto had managed to ignore all the signs and, stubbornly, he had insisted on a selective blindness —but in that moment not even him had been able to keep denying the simple and obvious reality that everyone had known and tried to make him see:

Sasuke wanted to die.

Sasuke wanted to die, and Naruto had lacked strength (or had had too much heart) to kill him.

_I’ll die with you_ , he’d promised, but when it came down to it he couldn’t do it and now Sasuke’s condemned to live and his hatred is a poison that consumes him and spills around him infecting everything, but Naruto prefers this if it means Sasuke’s alive.

(Naruto still doesn’t know how wrong he is).

That time, the first one he tangles in his sheets, he leaves immediately after. While he fastens his pants with his back turned to him, he thinks he can make it. Then he turns around and faces Sasuke’s armored gaze. He’s standing straight, barely covered by a pair of pants, and handles him his shirt with a stretched arm and a mocking grin on his lips.

(That’s when he sees it.

He sees it, and the instant of clarity is so sudden and painful as it was when he saw him at his feet waiting for death to come.

This is his future. That’s how Sasuke’s going to break him. His hatred is a poison that gets inside him after the bite, yeah, but it’s his love what makes it swells inside his veins).

Naruto grits his teeth.

Then he accepts it. 

Before the sun’s raising light, in his apartment, he watches his wounds. Just the external wounds —he lets the inner ones rest. Four soft red lines descend his forearm and Naruto has to jog his memory until he thinks he can recall the burning sensation when Sasuke’s nails broke his skin. It’s hard to be sure, especially with that host of emotions that now are nothing more than a vague trace of discomfort inside his chest. Sitting on the edge of his bed and leaning forward, he rotates his arm and sunrays fall upon his skin making it look paler. After long seconds of fixed contemplation, he lifts his arm and runs the tip of his tongue over it.

Within a few hours the scratches will be completely gone.

Clenched in his hand shines the metal of Konoha’s headband (the one that’s not his, the one that’s cursed) and Naruto runs his fingertips over the crossed symbol and tightens his fist until his knuckles become white and he tries to stop the flood of memories. He leans forward and falls on his knees on the floor (like when he begged for Sasuke’s life) and bends over himself (like the first time Sasuke tried to kill him) until the cold metal caresses his forehead and he feels like drowning (like when Sasuke looks at him and Naruto can’t see anything in his eyes).

Sasuke isn’t Sasuke anymore.

Probably he isn’t Naruto either.

The sob vibrates within his chest and he does everything he can to hold it back. The strangulation upon his throat hurts him and Naruto tries, he really does, he tries as hard as he can to avoid it but in the end he bursts into tears, and once it begins, it’s impossible to stop. He gasps for air because he feels like he is suffocating and when he breathes in, the air clashes with the sobs coming up from his chest, unstoppable, one after another, with the despair of a child.

He cries for everything he hasn’t cried for during the last months, for everything he hasn’t cried for in a lifetime. He cries (and he knows) for everything he won’t be able to cry for from now on. He cries until he gets rid of everything and there’s nothing left.

When, hours later, he manages to stop shaking, his vocal cords are raw and outside the night is pitch-black. Naruto contemplates his forearm under the dim light of the stars and slowly, with the taste of salt, he runs his tongue again over the mostly fainted marks and halts pressing his lips to his wrist, closing his eyes. He stays like that for a long time, static, feeling the calm pulse against his lips. There is a slight, cold sensation there where the traces of saliva vanish, but nothing more.

He feels nothing more.

(And if he happens to feel something, a really, _really_ deep shudder, he lies to himself and says it’s nothing).

That very night Naruto knocks on his door again and Sasuke’s not surprised. Without a word he steps aside so he can come in and Naruto waits until Sasuke closes the door before touching him.

* * *

Sakura’s on night watch at the hospital so Naruto suggests changing the traditional weekly dinner for lunch. The change is noticeable and when they arrive at Ichiraku’s they find a transit of clients they’re not used to during their lonely nightly dates. Maybe that distraction is what makes Sakura surprise Naruto with his guard down when she puts her chopsticks down on her ramen bowl and shoots him at point blank range.

“Stop trying, Naruto. Stop trying or it’d end up killing you”

“He can kill no one” he reminds her though they both know he can’t. Not even himself. The Village’s already taken care of it. They also know that there are many ways of killing, but they don’t say anything.

“Forget him. You’ll never save him. There’s nothing left to save”. Naruto clutches his glass of sake and empties it in one gulp. He doesn’t release it after putting it down again, and although he knows Sakura’s watching him, he avoids her eyes. “He’s— he’s hatred. He’s pure hatred. He hates you, Naruto, he hates everything he’s lost, everything he’s won and everything he’ll never have. That’s the only thing you’ll get from him. He hates you for staying by his side, he— he hates you for believing that he can still be the same Sasuke that he used to be. Can’t you see? He just wants to make you fall. He won’t stop until he makes you fall”.

_No_ , Naruto thinks. _He hates me because I didn’t leave him anything else._

He says nothing. In front of him Sakura seems about to cry. Naruto would like to be able to comfort her, to assure her that everything will be fine, to care even if it’s just a little. He reaches for Sakura’s hands and covers them —they’re so powerful, so fragile. The touch is warm and it’s nothing for Naruto. She looks at him, inspects his face and then she lowers her eyes down to his chest. Naruto feels the purple marks Sasuke makes bloom with his lips once and again burn, and he wonders if Sakura’s thinking about it, if she’s imagining the marks, if she’s imagining _them_.

“Sakura” he starts squeezing her hands —a mechanical gesture he forces himself to make. One that, not a long time ago (in another life) would have come naturally to him. She jerks away and the scraping sound of the stool against the floor when pulled backward silences the place.

“No” she says. Just that. “No”.

Naruto doesn’t try to stop her when she leaves.

* * *

Nights come and go in a blurry way.

Early mornings are _long_ —long like the scars over Sasuke’s back or like Naruto’s moans. Long like the yearning that a Naruto that no longer exists once felt for a moment like this (so similar and different at the same time).

They are dark, too. Dark like the depths in which Naruto buries his secrets or like Sasuke’s betrayed soul. Dark like the streets that, afterward, Naruto walks with the lonely secrecy of those who return from seeing a lover.

But there are no secrets in Konoha.

But it’s never been love, this thing between them.

It’s not hate, either, even if at times it was. That Naruto knows for sure, although if he had to say what it is, he wouldn’t know where to start (he lies). He tells himself it’s easier this way, and most of the time he manages to believe it (and he lies, he lies, he lies).

“It’s his punishment”.

The mild breeze makes the smoke of the cigarette fly his way and Naruto, from his lying position during a rare moment of calm in the middle of a mission, contemplates how it blends with the white spring clouds. If Sakura’s asked Shikamaru to talk to him or if he’s decided to act on his own volition is something Naruto fails to discern. He’s not interested enough to ask.

“He doesn’t want to drown alone” the genius murmurs next to him, and the words come out accompanied by smoke. Calmly, he inhales a new puff. “Don’t let him drown you along, Naruto”.

Shikamaru _knows_ , so Naruto doesn’t feel guilty when he doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t try to pretend. It’s been several weeks since his last encounter with Sakura and Naruto discovers with curious indifference that it’s becoming increasingly easy not to speak.

His anesthetized, peaceful state is truncated a few weeks later when he’s coming back home with the first daylight (with swollen lips, back full of bites) and he finds Hinata waiting for him at his doorstep —that’s when Naruto realizes he’s going to have to find the words.

“Naruto-kun”.

In fact, Naruto realizes a lot of things simultaneously.

He realizes Hinata must have gathered all the courage in the world to face him. Also, that he just doesn’t care. He realizes that it’s not fair for her to suffer through this (but it is not fair for _him_ either). He realizes, above all, that while Shikamaru knows, Hinata _thinks she knows_ , (and suddenly the difference becomes more obvious than ever).

Naruto realizes many things and he doesn’t need her to speak to know that she’s come to offer him another path, but what she doesn’t understand (and probably never will) is that Naruto has long since made his choice.

(The decision was made a long time ago. Way before that night, several months back, on his bedroom floor, after crying his heart out tear by tear and growing empty. Way before ‘we’ll die together’, way before battle and blood and absence.

Sometimes he wonders if there was even any choice to make.

Sometimes he feels there has never been any other choice but Sasuke).

“Naruto-kun, I—”

“ _Naruto_ ”.

Hinata looks up past him and Naruto, keeping his guard up, turns around slowly to the steely voice. Sakura looks tired but, at the same time, she looks more composed than ever.

“Hokage-sama requests your presence” she says, eyes in front of her not looking at him. “ _Now_ ”.

Naruto hesitates for an invisible moment. Then he nods and flashes Hinata a brief smile over his shoulder.

“Sorry” he smiles apologetically, “let’s talk in another occasion, Hinata”.

She takes a step in his direction, arm raised, his name in her lips but —Naruto’s already gone, just like the air that escapes through her fingers.

Jumping, Naruto follows Sakura through the roofs that start materializing under a still gray dawn. When she stops in the gap between two buildings, Naruto falls next to her minding not to touch her when he stands.

“Thank you” he says, and for a moment he thinks Sakura’s going to hit him with how brusquely she turns to him.

“I didn’t do it for _you_ ” she hisses. Her green eyes flash dangerously. “I did it for _her_ ”.

Then she jumps and disappears and Naruto stays there, alone, ignoring the crack that has just widened inside him and struggling to close it before it reaches the surface breaking him in two.

For a few seconds he considers going back to his apartment but the image of an elfin Hinata waiting at his door provokes a coward rejection inside of him. Eventually he opts for the only other logical option and, even if he should, Naruto doesn’t stop to consider if it is a good idea.

Sasuke, certainly, doesn’t think it is.

When he opens the door he’s not expecting to find Naruto there. It’s been less than an hour since Naruto left and this is out of their ordinary routine (always at night, always when it’s dark, as if Konoha didn’t know).

(Konoha _always_ knows).

Sasuke watches him for two enlightening seconds (Naruto’s dark gaze, his strange energy, the elusive face). Then he lets him in.

While he has showered and put on thin clothes to deal with the premature heat Naruto hasn’t changed, and when they fall on the messy sheets he can smell the sweat and sex stuck to his skin. Beneath all that there’s something else buzzing and it takes Sasuke (who isn’t familiar with this kind of confusion) some minutes to place the emotion and realize what it is.

Here? You came looking for comfort _here_? He wants to ask, incredulous at first for the levels of masochism Naruto can reach. But then something opens inside him due to the vulnerability laid in front of him: a dark, poisonous, ravenous hole —and Sasuke lets himself be dragged by hatred, and instead of stopping Naruto he just lets things run their course.

(Shikamaru is wrong: Naruto doesn’t need Sasuke. He can drown all on his own).

This time it’s him who ends up with his back against the bed and Naruto between his legs, and it could be like any other night were it not for the silent call Naruto’s not even aware of making —although once Sasuke’s identified Naruto’s confused and defenseless state, it’s impossible for him to ignore.

_Sasuke_ , he hears, desperate, between convulsions and sweat. And he is certain that, over him, Naruto’s still not aware of the silent and agonic way he’s calling out for him. Sasuke hears it and laughs, though he doesn’t make a sound either. _Sasuke_ , his bones say, and his skin, and only his voice fails, although it’s not as if it makes any difference. _Sasuke_ , and Naruto’s body pushing him against the bed, _Sasuke_ , and tons of heat, _Sasuke_ , and climax finally explodes along Naruto dragging them at the same time in one hundred different directions.

It could be like any other night were it not for Naruto who, once it’s over, presses his forehead against his shoulder in what is the first open gesture he allows himself, and for the first time in months they have a conversation.

“Why?”

Naruto’s voice comes out hoarse and muffled. Sasuke’s is just a little drier.

“You loved me too much” he answers. He knows they both are thinking the same, about the blood on the ground and his betrayal. Hatred bubbles slowly again in his stomach when he adds: “Or maybe not enough”.

It could be like any other night were it not for, this time, the first light filters through the windows when Naruto picks up his clothes and Sasuke gets to see his inhuman face before he leaves.

* * *

Suddenly, one day, much sooner than what Sasuke’d have ever expected and what Naruto’d have liked, Konoha demands his services as a ninja and he’s assigned to an exploratory mission.

He never gets to know if Naruto was already integrated in the team or if he forced his way in until he got a spot in the squadron but when they stand at attention before the dim daybreak seconds away from leaving, Naruto’s already there, situating at his side. From that moment and during the two weeks this mission lasts, he can feel him always behind him, tireless, invincible. Watching his back.

Sasuke studies him out of the corner of his eye and realizes on a whole new level that Naruto’s grown. During day he moves forward inexorably, with the exemplary efficiency of the best ninja. At night, he lies down on the ground covered with the blanket due to the increasingly cold temperature of the end of October and he only moves when it’s his turn to stand guard. Sasuke, systematically apart from the rest of the team’s members (or is it the rest of the squad who moves away from him?) watches Naruto’s immobile silhouette.

He doesn’t think any of them would even dare to try and touch him, but it seems that Naruto’s not as sure as him for that certainty to let him lower his guard. In the darkness, from his safe distance, Sasuke sees the reflection of Naruto’s eyes fixed on him and knows he does not sleep.

_It’s useless_ , he could say. _I’m not letting anyone kill me. You don’t deserve it to be that easy._

When the mission ends Kakashi welcomes them at the gates of the village. The rest of the squad dissolves with just one sign from him and, like shadows, each ninja rips the night in a different direction. Sasuke moves towards him and watches his former sensei closing his eyes with something too similar to pain when Naruto moves too like a goddamn watchdog. However, first of all Kakashi’s a good ninja so when he opens them again he’s gotten rid of any show of feelings in that way that, for a time, Sasuke thought Naruto had learnt but now he’s sure he’ll never will.

With no words Kakashi points behind him, and without looking back Sasuke follows him to the Hokage’s tower trying to suppress the violent feeling of vomit at the pit of his stomach he feels every time he sees the sharingan. Ever since Sasuke returned, Kakashi has never again covered his eye in his presence.

“Congratulations” he says once he’s sitting in his brand new office. There’s some kind of sour humor within his voice; Sasuke himself can see the twisted irony of the situation. “You are a ninja at the service of your Village again”.

With a finger he slides a new and shiny headband towards him over the table. Sasuke watches it, indifferent, before he closes his fingers around it and leaves the office.

Rumors run fast in Konoha, and consequently Sasuke’s not surprised when, after that one, it takes Naruto five nights before he comes back to him.

When he finally burst in to his house on the fifth night, he looks different. So Sasuke looks at him and finds himself in front of inscrutable eyes and a brutally serious grimace over the (despite all) still all too young features and—

_In the end it turns out that he does know how to hide his feelings_ , he thinks with something akin to sarcasm while Naruto takes advantage of that moment to push them both to the shadows of his bedroom. Actually it is thanks to that sudden proximity that Sasuke can see the vague fury inside the deep dark blue.

“Coward” he mutters when he finally understands that it’s him with whom Naruto is going to pay his rage against the Village. Sasuke makes him fall on the bed and before Naruto’s back crashes weakly against the mattress he sits over him and holds Naruto’s arms at each side of his face.

“You are gonna get killed out there” Naruto tells him, distant and icy as frost.

“Do you care? Do you still care?”

The question slides smoothly between them, like a caress (like a blow). Naruto’s features suddenly harden. He bends his arms over the bed quickly crossing his fingers above his head, and seconds later Sasuke finds himself being separated from him by another pair of hands.

“You owe me” says Naruto. “The least you owe me is to stay alive”.

Naruto’s punishment stretches for several long weeks, and every new mission Sasuke’s sent to intensifies its cold and hungry fury —just like the one he’s been assigned to the next day. The first one in which Naruto hasn’t manage to follow him. The first one in which Sasuke won’t have to stand his stare at night.

With a hoarse groan Sasuke drops his back onto the bed. He can’t see him from this position, but he feels Naruto’s eyes on him from his shadowy corner. The clone situated on his hips disappears and Sasuke feels his skin exposed to the cold night, the clone’s cum sticky over his chest and his own cock suddenly freed and aching. A few steps away Naruto’s body silently tightens assimilating the orgasm, but then again he feels it more than he sees it. Sasuke turns until he is face down, ready to finish himself, but before he can even start jerking off he senses movement and all of a sudden Naruto’s behind him unzipping his pants and touching him directly for the first time in a long time. He preps him fast and efficiently, his fingers naked and rough, and when he enters him they both sigh at the same time (breathless, burning).

Almost immediately Naruto starts thrusting —an erratic movement of hips practically since the beginning. He makes no sound. Sasuke feels him pressing his mouth to his neck, fitting it into his collarbone and clenching his jaws to swallow his words. He imagines the way he knows Naruto’s biting his tongue and he smiles when he feels the blood leaving traces over his skin under Naruto’s lips (or maybe it’s just spit). Despite his strenuous efforts none of that is enough: tension builds up, Naruto’s containment reaches its limit and he inevitably explodes.

“ _I hate you_ ” he breaks, sighing against his ear like a secret while Sasuke arches his back against his chest and Naruto comes inside him. “I hate you” he repeats with a rabid moan that only at the end bends on itself desperately while he keeps thrusting into him. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you—”

Several minutes after Naruto’s chakra is completely gone, Sasuke —still face down against the sheets— parts his lips.

“No. What you hate is not being able to do it”.

His sarcastic grin crashes against the pillow. Naruto’s semen, warm, starts dripping down his legs.

Only a few hours later Sasuke finds himself again in front of the village’s gates ready to go. The sun, its rays like slashes, is already rising above the highest roofs while Sasuke adjusts the katana to his waist. Nearby Sakura is lacing her hair in a ponytail and the other two members of the squad exchange a few words, their bodies rigid in anticipation.

Right before following the departure order he looks back and sees Naruto leaning against an alley wall with his arms falling powerless at his sides and a broken soul —the pathetic image of the great man he will never be.

Their eyes meet and, for a moment, hate doesn’t seem strong enough.

* * *

The next time he sees him is from the hospital’s clean sheets. At first Sasuke is confused and it’s hard for him to connect the last vision he remembers (one of a rainforest and darkness) with the blurry light and the smell of antiseptic and new gauze that doesn’t completely cover the stench of blood; to connect the memory of the tense silence of the battle with Sakura’s increasingly loud whispers coming from the hallway.

He turns his head on the pillow following the sound, and as soon as he is able to think with some clarity he realizes that opposite that door they don’t know he is awake (he guesses he must thank Orochimaru and his years of training and experimentation that gave his body a high tolerance to all kind of chemical substances, poisons and painkillers alike). There’s an open crack, barely a handspan width, but it’s enough for him to make out Sakura’s back and Naruto’s grave, fixed face.

Sakura is trembling like something’s consuming her inside out.

“I wish he’d die. I wish he’d die! I wish he’d go and never come back”.

“Sakura-chan—”

“I want him _dead_ ” she says vehemently and she inhales as if the air wasn’t reaching her lungs and she couldn’t breathe. Naruto opens his arms and holds her close just as she begins to cry. It’s a desperate, inconsolable cry, as if it were tearing her chest, overflowing her body and bursting in her eyes, her mouth. The more she cries, the more incapable he seems to do the same. “I want my life back” she howls clinging to his clothes.

Naruto hugs her tighter and closes his eyes. Sasuke does the same. He listens to them for a long time: Sakura’s sobs, Naruto’s silence. They don’t come into the room.

Two days later, when he is discharged, no one’s waiting for him at the hospital gates —just an official and mechanical message from the Hokage ordering rest during the recovery period before he returns to service. He doesn’t disappoint, and neither does Naruto when, at midnight, he shows up as if nothing’s happened at all and Sasuke—

Sasuke doesn’t get it.

Naruto pants. Naruto pants, and his body tenses, and he barely has the time to get out of Sasuke to come all over his stomach. He leans his forehead on Sasuke’s bruised shoulder and tries to catch his breath. Slowly, as if reluctantly, he moves one of the hands he has curled around his waist to jerk him off out of rhythm until he is coming too and— it’s obvious he will never fully understand Naruto’s twisted logic, because now that he’s been wounded in a mission and it’d make more sense not to touch him (now that he doesn’t deserve to be touched), _now_ is when Naruto decides to get rid of the clone.

No, he thinks crumbling on the bed and watching Naruto getting dressed.

He’ll never fully understand him.

* * *

Once again nights come and go one after another in a constant monotony of touches and heat and drowning each other.

(Maybe in hopes of sleeping forever).

(Maybe in hopes of waking up).

It’s the middle of winter when he is summoned again for a mission.

“You are gonna get killed” Naruto repeats against the back of his neck with a soft rage that, this time, seems to be entirely directed towards Sasuke.

He doesn’t answer.

When he comes back from his mission Naruto’s out the Village. That’s probably the reason why Sakura chooses precisely that night to go see him.

When he opens the door he remembers that the last time he saw her face to face was the night they were ambushed. They were outnumbered two to one even before Sasuke saw one of Konoha’s ninjas fall down convulsing. _Poison_ , he had thought, and then he had reacted by pure instinct (an instinct rooted in his blood, in the core of everything that defines him, the very center of his being) and without thinking he had activated the sharingan —a sharingan he can’t use anymore ( _yes_ , the Village’s taken care of it). His eyelids and his head _burned_ , and he managed to knock down four of them before he fell on his knees unable to stop the painful stabs within his mind. Everything turned black (real black, a total darkness and not just the one of a moonless night) and the last thing he got to see was Sakura’s pale face rushing over him. He saw her moving her lips, but the world had gone silent around him. She could have been screaming his name.

She could have been screaming anything.

Now she’s in front of him again, the both of them standing in the middle of his cold, uninhabited living room.

“What do you want?” he asks in a direct, rough voice because power games stopped making sense to him long ago. They are surrounded by shadows. Sakura’s still staring at him, and it is a fierce look, one he’d never remembered seeing on her if he’d bothered to think about it.

“Why are you doing this?”

Sasuke doesn’t respond immediately. Actually he doesn’t even know if he’s planning on answering when Sakura speaks again, this time with undeniable poison.

“Why are you doing this to _him_?”

Naruto. Obviously.

Sasuke doesn’t owe her an answer. Sasuke (despite what Naruto seems to think) doesn’t owe anything to anyone, and since he neither care about anything, he answers with raw honesty.

“I don’t know”.

“You are killing him” she spits, as if Sasuke didn’t already know.

“I’m killing myself”.

* * *

  
Naruto returns at the beginning of spring, a cold spring, with frost still covering the windows.

It’s three in the morning and his breath goes up in white clouds when he stops at his doorstep. Without knowing why, Sasuke notices the two drops of somebody else’s blood on his jacket that he’ve had no time to clean.

He finds him thinner, when they get naked.

(Although Naruto’s been losing weight slow but constantly during the last few months).

He also finds him paler, in the dark.

(It may just be a trick of the light).

He’s definitively different, when they’re skin against skin, and he doesn’t seem to notice when he starts crying quietly —silent tears that fall over Sasuke when Naruto leans over him supporting his weight on his stretched arms.

(Sasuke pretends not to see them.

Naruto, on the other hand, accepts the casual caress with which Sasuke cleans them as if they’re nothing but traces of sweat).

Then Sasuke slips a hand in his hair and strokes his nape with long fingers, and it’s horrible to know that this is how things could have been between them.

_Just for today_ , Naruto tells himself thrusting against Sasuke one last time, feeling him shiver, resting on his chest, _just for a moment…_

Naruto knows that he’s lying and that he wants a ‘forever’ but his will is stronger than his desire and, after a few seconds, he gets rid of Sasuke’s touch thinking that it’s not fair —it’s not fair to live with Sasuke’s latent hatred and his empty eyes and that, after he cuts his heart open to stand it, Sasuke shows a little warm making him hesitate.

“I love you” he says in the silence of the room, sitting on the edge of the bed with his elbows resting on his knees.

No, thinks Sasuke looking in his direction. It’s not love, this thing between them.

Sometimes, when he’s in a melancholic good mood Sasuke stops and, always within the privacy of his own mind, concedes that maybe, at the beginning, it was. But it’s been so long since that that it’s like it belongs to another life, to other people, to something that could have been too long ago.

It’s not hate, either. Sasuke knows it isn’t hate although, at some point, it probably was. It’s just them, as always, in the middle of everything when there’s nothing left and somehow they know it couldn’t have ended any other way.

In fact, it’s very simple.

Naruto needs to convince himself that he hates him. Sasuke knows he doesn’t love him.

(—Or truth and lie devour each other and no one knows where the self-deception starts).

Naruto stands incredibly still when he perceives movement behind him, and then Sasuke’s forehead rests against his bare shoulder.

_No_ , he begs gritting his teeth.

“I’m killing you” Sasuke says echoing Sakura’s words, although Naruto already knows in the same way he knew and didn’t need her to say it.

This time Naruto clenches his fists too. It’s not right that he wants to love him after everything that’s happened. It’s not right that he loves him after everything they’ve done to each other.

“If you won’t let me love you, at least let me hate you. I have the right to hate you”.

The festering crack that opens up from Naruto’s closed heart grows, grows, grows until it breaks him down from inside, making him close his eyes for all the pain he’s been accumulating up until now. It irradiates in waves, in a quiet, infinite, terrible tremor.

Naruto realized it that first night. In that moment he knew it. Staying by Sasuke’s side would only mean watching him lose himself bit by bit and still Naruto accepted it. He knew Sasuke knew how he felt, why he forced him to live —just as Naruto knew that, if Sasuke couldn’t get to die, he was determined to make him pay until the both of them were equally broken.

And Naruto didn’t mind. But this… _This_ …

Naruto raises his face to the ceiling and some silent tears begin to fall down his cheeks and his clenched jaw. Sasuke’s still holding himself against his back. Slowly, he feels him rest his fingers on his hip. Cruel fingers that, surprisingly, hold him firmly.

“I can’t” Naruto hears, a warm breath against his neck.

It’s like that, in that same position, how they watch the sun rise for the first time.

**Author's Note:**

> Intimacy  
>    
> Together we dream  
> together we wake
> 
> time  
> meanwhile  
> does or undoes 
> 
> it doesn’t care about  
> your dream  
> nor my dream
> 
> we are docile  
> clumsy  
> destructible  
> we think that seagull  
> won’t fall
> 
> that beyond the end  
> there’s another shore  
> that the battle is ours  
> or no one’s
> 
> together we live  
> together  
> we destroy us
> 
> but destruction is a joke  
> a detail  
> a gust  
> an instant  
> the opening and closing  
> of blind eyes
> 
> ah our intimacy  
> is so vast  
> that death hides it  
> within its void


End file.
